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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22475212">Helping Hands</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur'>CherFleur</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SGA drabble fic [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate Atlantis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Another sort of drabble, Comfort, Gen, Sentient Atlantis, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:07:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22475212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Having been patient, having waited so long, Atlantis is ready to learn these Descendants. New living ones are always interesting and so very changeable.</p>
<p>They will take care of them while they can, and support them in the ways that the living ones cannot support themselves. Atlantis has been, and is, many things; Atlas is just one of them.</p>
<p>All pieces of a Sentient are important.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Atlantis &amp; Rodney McKay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SGA drabble fic [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616983</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Helping Hands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Again, I blame Fisch. She knows what she's done.</p>
<p>Grammar and typos, please let me know.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They liked the engineer. Their doctor. He might have a cloned genome, but he was intelligent, and he cared deeply. He loved to wax poetic about their circuitry, to stroke clever hands against their crystal matrixes. He marveled over their construction, over their very existence, even if he didn’t know enough to see their Existence.</p>
<p>Not yet.</p>
<p>They had faith and facts that stated that he <em>would</em>.</p>
<p>Meredith Rodney McKay was a creator at heart, and he learned them admirably. The simpler systems, of course, but he learned them. He routed enough power that they could not with their limited amount of repair nanites so that Atlantis could activate their Interactive Platform.</p>
<p>So that true reconstruction could begin.</p>
<p>
  <strong>INITIALIZING INTERACTIVE APARATUS</strong>
</p>
<p>.10%</p>
<p>5%</p>
<p>20%</p>
<p>37%</p>
<p>56%</p>
<p>76%</p>
<p>96%</p>
<p>
  <strong>INITIALIZED</strong>
</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>Atlas opened their optics.</p>
<p>The area of around their Platform was full of water, and debris trapped their lower extremities. Before moving, they ran a quick calibration on themselves to sync with their form. They would need to take it to a repair bay before prioritizing the sections of their primary body that needed the most attention.</p>
<p>While the Descendants were admirably working their way outward, they were understandably unsuited to certain tasks.</p>
<p>Lifting the debris from their form, the nanocrystal construct that was the Platform for their Interactive function, Atlas, shifted upright. Scans of the surrounding area told them the most efficient route out of the dilapidate area in which the Platform had been abandoned during the war. The Third Ones had rarely needed the assistance of this piece of Atlantis’ function.</p>
<p>The living rarely liked to be reminded of their Sentience. To them, machines should be machines, and Atlas wistfully thought of the days when they’d first led the Third Ones away.</p>
<p>It had been thousands of years since they’d used this construct; it would need updating.</p>
<p>Their Platform shifted visible features to better blend in with the Descendants, taking on the uniform of one of the scientists. It wouldn’t do to startle them unduly, they were so very young, and so very new to the tragedy that the Wraith could bring.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Atlantis didn’t yet have the power necessary to open the Star Tunnel to return them to the protection of SENTINEL 3. It would take time to repair the charging stations and then they would need STAR BARGE to deliver materials refined by CRADLE 4.</p>
<p>Already, they were building contingency files for when the young Descendants inevitably brought the Wraith down upon Atlantis again.</p>
<p>They had weathered them before, and they would do so again.</p>
<p>Still, having one of the GLOBE STRINGS in place as a precaution wouldn’t be remiss. Finding resources so that perhaps CRADLE 4 might begin construction of addition GLOBE STRINGS was also under consideration.</p>
<p>There were children in their halls again.</p>
<p>They needed to protect the newest. Atlantis wanted to protect the future of these people, those who might become the Fourth Ones – never the Final Ones – so that they could keep them for as long as possible. So Atlas would do what was necessary as intermediary between physical and digital to build themselves up and out once more.</p>
<p>Once upon a time they had been a bastion of hope and safety, and they wanted to be so again.</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>When dealing with members of the Descendants, they wore the shell of an Athosian. When dealing with members of the Athosians, they wore the shell of a Descendant.</p>
<p>When with both, they wore their original design, because it seemed that neither group had noticed that Atlas was not one of <em>either</em> group.</p>
<p>Strange.</p>
<p>Atlantis was fond of these naïve little living things, who warmed the halls and brought laughing children to them. Strangely unobservant for Pegasus Natives, though perhaps not for the Milky Way.</p>
<p>Atlas was of the thought that the Athosians still assumed them one of the Descendants, and so didn’t question it.</p>
<p>Often, they changed subroutines that had been written by exhausted flesh hands into something less draining, rewriting what had been given to them. Small things that helped to ease the burden on these Descendants, these potential Fourth Ones.</p>
<p>Their new doctor, their engineer, their loud, irritable but caring McKay was often the most exhausted. He overlooked all of his subordinates’ work before uploading, checking it over for errors. Yet even his brilliant mind grew weary, and Atlas settled to work endlessly with a smile, guiding their doctor to his rest.</p>
<p>SENTINEL 3 sent data packets so that they might know more how to comfort and integrate these Descendants. Gave them fuel with which to work towards giving them comfort when so few were comforted by their walls in the way that the Direct Descendants were. Most could not find solace in the glitter of crystal and the warm pulse of energy in their walls.</p>
<p>So Atlas set up various Comfort Stations around the areas that the living ones had deemed ‘safe’. Fabricated couches and pillows with soft blankets, areas that played music from the areas identified as the origin point for those who used them. Knickknacks and comfort items, books and games that SENTINEL 3 reported that their significantly larger passel of Descendants enjoyed.</p>
<p>Their scanners would not tell them the truly unsafe areas, because Atlantis did not want them in the labs. Did not want them in the armories. Not yet. Not yet.</p>
<p>They were still irritable with the Third One who had taken privilege from them and attempted to integrate with their systems. To impersonate <em>Atlas</em>, as if that were a things so easily done. Atlantis had interfered and she had worn her own face as she stood on the holographic projector, and they would not humor her.</p>
<p>Having already abandoned Atlantis, they did not get to change their systems when they wanted. They did not get to <em>invade </em>them.</p>
<p>Tampering was not tolerated.</p>
<p>All of the new ones still only had Probationary Access.</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>“Hello, Dr. McKay,” they said in a lower toned modulation that would not exacerbate the man’s headache. “I have tea for you, and a snack. Please consume them and then go to sleep.”</p>
<p>“W –” bleary eyes blinked up at them before the man scowled, a reflexive action. “Atlas, I don’t have time to sleep! That idiot Kavanaugh has been messing up the lighting protocols in his sector and I’m <em>not </em>going to waste energy so he can get mood lighting for his method acting!”</p>
<p>Tilting their cranial structure, they set the cup down, amused and fond at the way that his eyes zeroed in on it near immediately.</p>
<p>“Is – is that an Ancient teacup?” tired, sore hands picked it up. “Oh my god it is. Where did you find this? It has temperature controls and <em>filtration</em>!”</p>
<p>“If you eat, drink and sleep,” Atlas twisted constructed face plains in the approximation of a pleasant expression. “Then I will tell you. No, you cannot just back-trace me in the system.”</p>
<p>“Sneaky Athosians,” the man muttered, shoulders relaxing even as he took a drink. “Should report you to Teyla, see how you like that.”</p>
<p>“She would commend me for helping you take care of yourself,” they stated easily. “Because you take such good care of everyone else.”</p>
<p>A high pink flush rose to the living one’s cheeks and Rodney glared at them, muttering insults about their level of intelligence and his assumption of the savageness of the Athosians.</p>
<p>This Descendant needed guidance and care, an understanding ear who would not shy away from insult and scathing comments. Atlantis had dealt with worse than a living one belittling their Atlas, especially when it was more of a calibration technique to keep his system safe. A coping mechanism, as it were.</p>
<p>Someday, he would know that it wasn’t necessary to be cruel to be seen as important, to matter.</p>
<p>He was their new doctor, which clever hands and care in him.</p>
<p>Atlantis was many things, but inattentive was not one of them.</p>
<p>They would fix these things too; Atlas was meant for repair and communication.</p>
<p>They had time.</p>
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